David Cameron will cull the quangocrats

Many congratulations to Fraser Nelson, the new editor of The Spectator, on his first issue. Every piece in the magazine is worth a read: Tim Stanley on the underwhelming Kennedys, John Hulsman on US foreign policy, Sinclair McKay on what David Cameron could learn from John Steed (of The Avengers), James Delingpole on how upper class his friends are, Martin Vander Weyer on that Widmerpool of our age, Lord Turner.

Mention of whom brings me to this piece by Dennis Sewell, on how David Cameron should begin his ministry with a ruthless épuration of quangos. Fraser was one of the first journalists to read and understand The Plan, which sets out a programme to shift power from unelected officials to elected representatives.

With spectacularly poor timing, our book was launched on the day that the banks collapsed, so several newspapers pulled the articles that they had planned to run about it. Only two pieces appeared, at opposite ends, so to speak, of the dead tree spectrum: one in The Daily Star and one by Fraser in The Spectator. As it turned out, Fraser’s judgment was correct: despite the absence of coverage, the book became the best-selling political tract in Britain, and has not been out of Amazon’s Top 30 Titles for 11 months. More to the point, it is progressively becoming official Conservative policy.

How heartening to see the Speccie pursuing the localist agenda. Sewell makes a knock-down case. Quite apart from the democratic imperative, there is a political imperative: if the Tory leader doesn’t act immediately against the apparat, he will leave in place a machine which will frustrate his programme. I think Cam understands this perfectly. His priority is to bring down Britain’s spending and borrowing levels, and he knows that this won’t happen until quangos are pulverised and budgets placed in the hands of representatives who must answer to taxpayers. He’ll do the right thing. You’ll see.